Opposition politician speculates: ‘It will be impossible and irresponsible to call for a GE soon, which makes it interesting’

Former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) and Workers’ Party (WP) politician Yee Jenn Jong took to social media speculating when the elections might be called.

In a Facebook post last week (Feb 5), Mr Yee noted that “It will be a tough year”.

He also added that the impact to businesses will be severe, especially for some sectors more so than others.

Explaining his post in the comments section, he elaborated: “The points of the post are (1) many businesses will be affected, not just those obvious ones like transport and tourism. SMEs already have a tough time and 2020 was already going to be bad so now it will be almost certain to push Singapore to recession”.

While he expressly mentioned that curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) should be the incumbents’ priority, he added that the “EBRC should release their report as soon as they finish, regardless of whether GE is to be called soon or not. They have already taken far longer than usual and can definitely finish by now. Productivity should be the hallmark of Singaporeans”.

The Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) was convened in August last year. The formation of the EBRC marks the first firm step towards the next General Election (GE) and precedes the calling of the election.

In the past three General Elections (GEs), the EBRC has taken between two to four months to complete its review.

Referring to precedence, Mr Yee said “It will also be impossible and irresponsible to call for a GE soon, which makes it interesting because the EBRC was formed on 1 Aug 2019 and they had already taken much longer than usual to produce the report”.

“How long more will they need to finish the boundary changes? In 2015 they only needed 2 months to finish their work”, he questioned.

Not only are Singaporeans wondering when the elections might be called, speculation over how the EBRC will carve up the electoral wards has also been rife, ever since the Elections Department (ELD) announced that the EBRC was convened in August. /TISG